SKARGA NADZWYCZAJNA – DOPEŁNIENIE SYSTEMU OCHRONY PORZĄDKU KONSTYTUCYJNEGO
EXTRAORDINARY COMPLAINT – SUPPLEMENTING THE SYSTEM FOR PROTECTING CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the deficit of legal remedies allowing for the judicial review of the constitutionality of final court’s judgments. The deficit resulting from the narrow scope of the constitutional complaint as administered by the Constitutional Tribunal under the Art. 79 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, has been considerably reduced since 2018. The constitutional complaint allows only challenging unconstitutional statutory provisions upon which a challenged judgment was issued. This does not allow challenging a judgment that was issued in breach of the Constitution itself, if it was based on statutory provisions, which are perfectly conformant to the Constitution. This narrow scope of the constitutional complaint provoked much of criticism and the call for broadening it, so as to it encompassed a judgment itself and not only its statutory base. The paper argues that such an amendment has been already implemented in substantial dimension, without modification of the scope of the constitutional complaint. The said substantial supplementation took place through the introduction of the new extraordinary review, which started to be administered by the Supreme Court in 2018. The paper argues that extraordinary review is a form of a specific constitutional review applicable to judicial decisions. Together with the constitutional complaint, the extraordinary complaint makes the system of protection of constitution and the constitutional rights substantially much more comprehensible. While the constitutional complaint provides review of the general and abstract statutory provisions, the extraordinary complaint provides the same for specific and individual judgments.

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